Good People
by ifithasapulse
Summary: "Are we good people, though? We hurt everyone we care about, we destroy without consideration. We lie and forget it's a lie. And we're the good guys?" Artemis maneuvers her freshman year of college amid a mysterious illness. Artemis/Tim. Not canon compliant.


""i suppose i love life, in spite of my clenched fist." - andrea gibson, _birthday_

Fall slips into winter. Artemis' life, already demanding, becomes incessant as afternoon studying sessions melts into evening training sessions and late-night busts end in 8am lectures. Snow piles up, icy slush shines slickly on Gotham's asphalt streets, and the blonde fades with the shrinking days. Peaches-and-cream gives way to ashy pallor, grey eyes framed by violet under-eye circles lined in exhaustion, and her angular bone structure becomes gaunter, exaggerating her large eyes and plush lips until she resembles more a faint doll than teenager.

Combating crime is different now, Artemis is sure – her back couldn't have hurt this much when she was sixteen. Wrapping her fingers around her pencil, digging the point into her exam scantron and watching burgundy blossom under her cracked nailbeds nails like ink spurting from a snapped pen – this is new. Or perhaps she has simply never noticed, never paid attention to the way her right elbow clicks when she raises her hand in discussion, the way her neck strains after hours of patrol, the way her jaw aches when she wakes from grinding her teeth in her sleep.

And still, the days continue.

She's hunched over the breakfast island, dark blonde hair spilling messily from under her black sweatshirt's drawn hood, and something about the exhausted curve of her spine tugs at Tim's gut.

"Artemis."

She jerks violently, snapping her head towards him so quickly he reads the confusion, panic, and fear flash in her huge, sunken grey eyes before she blinks, and shuts him out.

"Hey," she says unsteadily.

"Hey," Tim repeats, resting his hip against the doorframe. "You look tired."

"Oh." A subtle shrug drops the hood to her shoulders, revealing triple pierced ears laden with tiny diamonds. "I - yeah. Had a long day."

Silence settles between them, caught between the awkward tilt of Artemis's head as she gazes questioningly at him and the dimmed kitchen light illuminating Tim's curious stare back.

"I didn't know you had your ears pierced," he blurts out, and he really cannot explain why, only knows that he is struck by the wavering timbre of her raspy voice, the shards of confusion in her smoky eyes.

"They're fake," she replies automatically, reaching wanly to drag her thumb over a diamond stud. "The earrings, I mean."

He wants to say he likes them, her triple-pierced ears and her fake diamond studs, but she's flicking the loose hair from her neck and the gaping neck of her sweatshirt has shifted to expose an inelegant pattern of bruises dappling her throat and what comes out instead is, "When did -

"You wonder boys are all the same," she says softly, hazy grey eyes zeroing in on his narrowed blue ones.

Tim tries to pretend that her comment doesn't sting. "Are you in trouble?"

She levels an even look at him, regal despite her self-professed fake jewelry and unwashed hair and rumpled black sweatshirt and suddenly, finally, he understands why Dick has always told him Artemis is his hardest friend to help.

"No more than the rest," she replies breezily, and slides off her stool and past him.

Tim watches her slight frame disappear beyond the staircase, realizing that the tug in his gut has only intensified.

" _Christ_ ," Artemis hisses, tipping her head back against the bathroom wall and closing her eyes. Tim watches the lines of her throat flex as she shudders delicately, the sweat-slick flush heating up her porcelain skin as far as her scooped tank top will reveal, and bites back a groan himself.

"More," Artemis pants breathlessly, slender hands escaping under his shirt to pull him abruptly closer, nearly unseating herself from her precarious perch on the edge of the sink. She parts her lips to say something else but is interrupted by the hasty bump of their noses, and when he lowers his mouth to hers Tim can feel the curve of her smile against his.

"'Mis," he sighs into her mouth, gut curling as her long, tapered fingers glide along his ribcage and then lower, tracing loops into the ridges of his hipbones. "'Mis – "

"Shh," she murmurs against his jaw, kissing open-mouthed butterfly kisses down his throat until a particularly well-placed thrust of his hand has her crying out into his shoulder. She unravels quickly, encouraged by Tim's calculatedly uneven pace and the soothing kisses he presses against her collarbone. Her stuttering heartbeat reverberates through him as she leans against his chest, inhaling sharply shallow breaths before planting a slick kiss to his pulse as though saying _thank you_.

She raises her golden head from his shoulder, smoky grey eyes blown wide with desire, and Tim thinks he might actually eat her alive.

As if reading his mind, Artemis shimmies, dropping the navy track shorts already damp with sweat and arousal onto the bathroom floor. "Tim…"

"Yeah," he groans, trying to help her out of her top without dislodging her from the sink. The scent emanating from her neck is making his head spin and he props a hand up behind her as he works the back of her bra. "I know, I know, 'Mis…"

" _Tim_ ," she says more urgently, and his body almost hurts from how badly he wants her, distressed at the limitations time presents.

"TIM!"

Tim wakes less than a second before a sailing sofa pillow lands on his face. Inhaling sharply, he squints at the source of the disturbance as a number of realities materialize, the primary being that he is alone in bed at Wayne Manor and definitely not in the medical bay's male restroom kissing Artemis against the mirrors.

 _What the…?_

"You're going to be laaate," Dick warns him, his right arm pulled back in preparation to launch another pillow at his distressed brother. "I've been trying to wake you for, like, three minutes."

"Sorry," Tim mumbles, pressing his hands to his sweating forehead before glancing at the mass of sheets he'd somehow kicked onto the floor.

 _This is so bad_.

"You don't have time to shower," Dick notes, checking his watch, "but if you hurry you can have some of the coffee Alfred made. Who were you dreaming about, anyway?"

"No one," Tim says quickly, throwing off his tee and rummaging around haphazardly for his Gotham Academy uniform. "Just…no one."

 **a/n:** hi beautiful people long time no see. leave me a review? 3


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